Cory Booker

Mayor Cory Booker(newyork.cbslocal.com)

Cory Booker is a mayor on a mission.  He is out to save Newark, New Jersey, a city with such a sordid, corrupt history that all most residents there really want is out. Cory Booker could have done anything. He is a charismatic, eloquent, empathic Rhodes Scholar who moved into one of Newark's worst housing projects in his second year of Yale Law School.  African American, Booker had been raised and educated in affluent white surroundings, but Booker would later say that for some reason, that high rise "sky ghetto" was the first place he felt truly home.

Outside the city, Mayor Booker has been seen as "an angel, threatened only by Newark's gravity".  He has been compared to Barack Obama in ability and potential. He is a darling in the national media and talk shows.  He gets on easily with hedge fund managers and the mayor of New York. He even got the socially odd head of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg to donate 100 million dollars to Newark 's failing schools.

Inside the city there are more doubts. The nuts and bolts of everyday city governing are tough, especially if they are greasy.  Booker has been reelected, puts in nonstop days in every corner of the city, but real change looks naiive in the face of continued murders, gang warfare, budget cuts, layoffs, unemployment. Few doubt his zeal, the question sometimes is whether anyone can affect the necessary depth of change. But when Newark starts feeling rundown, out springs Cory Booker,  "Supermayor." The mayor that came home one late spring night in 2012 to see his neighbor's house on fire.  In spite of his own security's efforts to hold him back, Mayor Booker dove into burning house and saved the woman.

Yes, inside Newark, there are doubts. But even the doubters agree that Newark has at least one thing going for it, and that thing is Cory Booker.